Author Archives: Shakoiya Flagg

Child witnesses are sometimes considered to be unreliable sources of information in investigations.  There is an idea that children are impressionable and can sometimes be swayed into saying things that are untrue.  Their imagination may get the best of them and they may start to make up stories that are not true.  Or, their testimonies may be influenced by social workers and attorneys.  In the video, a reporter is telling the story of Caleigh Harrison who disappeared while on a family outing at the beach.  Police say that there is no evidence that she was abducted and that she may have been swept away in the ocean.  Her four year old sister tells a different story.  She insists that there was a mysterious man at the beach that day with her family and that he took Caleigh.  In the video, psychologist Dr. Robin Deutsch speaks of the factors that influence child reliability.  She says that four year olds can indeed be reliable.  Their reliability depends on their ability to recount information.  Reliability also depends on who is asking the questions and when they are asking the questions.  For instance, if it is a family member who does not have training in proper interviewing techniques then they may put untrue information into the child’s mind.  Also, if the child is not asked question about the event in a timely manner, then the child may be exposed to more information about the event and that information may be incorporated into the child’s recollection of the event.  Deutsch also points out that children respond to emotions.  If they are telling their memory of the event and they find that it displeases the person they are telling it to, they may change the story in order to appeal to the person they are talking to.  Child reliability was the issue in the video we saw in class called “Witch Hunt.”  The testimony of a child witness can make or break a case against a defendant.

necn.com/searchNECN/search/v/55991720/search-for-caleigh-are-child-witnesses-reliable.htm

Pre-schoolers are being diagnosed with mental illnesses at an alarming rate.  Because of these types of diagnoses, they are being prescribed anti-psychotic medications.  Most of the medications being prescribed to children are made for adults.  The doctors who prescribe these medications do not know the affects that the medications will have on the developing brain of a toddler, yet they still prescribe such medications.  The youtube video tells the story of a seven year old little boy who has been showing signs of psychosis since he was a couple months old according to his adoptive parents.  His biological father was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder so the young boy was thought to have a manic depressive disorder also.  He lashes out, physically harms his parents, throws objects, screams and on one occasion he tried to “kill” his little sister with a metal shovel.  Obviously, this child has issues.  The parents and his doctor felt like the appropriate course of action would be to put him on adult anti-psychotic drugs.  When he was three and a half years old he was diagnosed with ADHD and a mood disorder.  The drugs that were prescribed for this disorder did not help his outbursts at all.  His doctor then put him on an adult medication that is often prescribed to people who suffer from bi-polar disorder.  This medication worked to calm his mood but in the video he was nodding off and spacing out while trying to focus on eating his dinner.  This relates to the Conrad and Schneider piece “From Badness to Sickness:  The Medicalization of Deviance.”  This child clearly has some mental instabilities and could use some help.  In some cases regular childhood tantrums and such behavior is written off as deviance when it should not be.  I do believe that there are instances where a child should be medicated (this instance being one of them).  But, how much medication is too much medication when it comes to a child?

youtube.com/watch?v=EnJQLZ8Cf8E

Female sex offenders are thought to have a different psychological make-up than male sex offenders.  There was the case of a teacher named Debra Lafave in Florida.  She was having a sexual affair with one of her fourteen year old students.  Lafave is outwardly attractive and a reporter who spoke about this case called her “a living barbie doll.”  So if a woman is physically attractive, what would cause her to have to sexually abuse a child?  Well, according to psychologist Dr. Alan Lipman, female sex offenders have a different reason for sexually abusing other people.  Lipman says that women sex offenders “do not develop sexually in the same way as other women do, so inside they are still very young sexually.”  I find it very odd that a psychologist would say this.  For one, I think that this statement generalizes women sex offenders into a group of sexually-immature individuals.  This psychologist seems to be excusing the behavior of female sex offenders and stating that the reason why they molest children is simply because they are sexually immature.  I believe that women sex offenders are much like male sex offenders and that there is really no difference between the two rather than genitalia.  I can imagine that the same amount of intimidation and force is used by both female and male sex predators.  This video speaks to the readings we read “Deviance Gendered, Criminology Exposed” and “Murder in the Feminine:  Marie Lafarge and the Sexualization of the Nineteenth-Century Criminal Woman.”  I believe that female criminals have similar psychological mindsets as male criminals.